VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 220

0:00 Hey, what's up everybody?

0:00 Welcome back to another episode of Vision Flex Arts React.

0:02 We're going to get right into it.

0:03 Let's go.

0:11 You guys are very into skateboarding.

0:12 Love skateboarding.

0:14 Yeah.

0:14 Popping out kick flips all the time.

0:16 I got the candles for it.

0:17 One of the most famous skateboarding films of all time came out in 2003.

0:21 It's a film called Yeah, Right.

0:24 directed by Spike Jones.

0:25 Come on.

0:26 You got to take your hat off.

0:27 Backside 360 Manny down the Rosland Banks.

0:30 This is a legendary skateboard movie.

0:34 And this actually has some interesting effects.

0:44 Wa.

0:44 Heck yeah.

0:44 This is so Spike Jones.

0:46 That's cool.

0:47 Clean.

0:48 Look at that freaking shadow paintwork.

0:50 Yeah.

0:50 Painting that shadow in.

0:51 You got to get the bottom of those feet.

0:54 You guys are already identifying so much that no one else has.

0:58 For over 20 years, no one had any idea how this was done

1:03 really.

1:04 Other than behind the scenes footage where everyone is riding green skateboards,

1:12 the skateboards were painted green,

1:14 the wheels were painted green, the trucks were painted green.

1:17 Is that even green at that point from that far away?

1:19 And that's the thing is that like just because it's green doesn't mean

1:22 it's going to be easy to key because you got shadows changing things.

1:26 You get dirt on the skateboards.

1:27 You get the little screws that are not green.

1:29 It's so much more complicated than what people actually think.

1:33 We're also missing the most important detail here,

1:36 which is how are they filling in the hole left over by the skateboard?

1:40 And this is where the mystery sort of like stayed for a long time.

1:44 There's a real smoke puff.

1:45 That's sick.

1:46 Yeah.

1:46 I would only assume that they are motiontracking it by hand

1:51 or something and like tracking in patches of the ground,

1:54 but that might be beyond what's capable of the time.

1:57 I don't know.

1:58 So, I have actually done a film like this on a onehe where

2:02 I painted out the onehe on an actual onehe commercial, by the way.

2:05 It was several years ago, but I was very proud of it.

2:07 Painting out the onehe and just tracking in little

2:10 clean plates ended up being so much work.

2:13 It comes back to like everyone thinks that like, oh,

2:15 if you just make it green, it'll automatically be removed from the shot.

2:18 Anyone who's ever actually dealt with green screens before, no,

2:21 it's not as simple as just selecting green and keying it out.

2:25 Notice the shadow on the green skateboard there.

2:28 You try to key out the skateboard,

2:30 that part of the shadow is going to stay behind.

2:33 Yeah.

2:32 What this means is that the effects artist working

2:35 on this actually had to do a tremendous amount of manual masking.

2:40 This is before the days of Rotobrush.

2:42 This is before any sort of automated rotoscoping tools.

2:44 Yes, I'm sure they're probably keying out the skateboard,

2:47 but they're also manually painting back in the shadow.

2:51 Yeah.

2:51 The nice thing about using skateboards here is the only

2:54 time that you are going to obscure their feet is

2:56 when their feet are like closer to the middle

2:57 and you're shooting basically eye level behind one of the lips.

3:01 Yeah.

3:01 Everything else though,

3:02 at least it's higher up and you don't

3:03 need to worry about the bottom of the feet.

3:05 I want to shout out an ad company named Sandwich on Instagram for making

3:08 a video that kind of pointed this out and brought my attention to it.

3:11 What the guys at Sandwich revealed was

3:13 that this was all done with motion control.

3:17 Really?

3:18 Oh, interesting.

3:19 But like, how do you plan a motion control shot to move and zoom

3:24 in with the chaos of skateboarders riding through

3:27 and making micro adjustments for where they go?

3:29 Yeah, that's a good question.

3:30 Wait.

3:32 Yeah.

3:31 Did they do this shot once and have the camera motion recorded and play it back?

3:36 Yeah.

3:39 Wow.

3:38 Wow.

3:39 Instead of operating the camera with your hands,

3:41 they're literally remote controlling the camera, following it with a controller,

3:45 and that's recording the motion as it goes along.

3:48 They would then run it again without anyone

3:49 in the shot to get a perfect frame by frame matchup.

3:53 Clean plate.

3:54 Yeah.

3:54 Wow.

3:54 You just do it immediately right after the take,

3:56 so the lighting's exactly the same.

3:58 Oh, yep.

3:59 Some great plate.

4:00 Great plate right there.

4:01 Great plate.

4:01 Big shout out to the actual VFX artists,

4:04 Johannes Gamble, Bucky Fukamoto, and Josh Graham.

4:07 Any skateboarder in their 30s or older will absolutely

4:10 know this film and they will know this sequence.

4:12 What's up guys?

4:12 Christian here.

4:13 You know, with fantasy stuff like The Night of the Seven Kingdoms,

4:16 I always like when a story understands that strength

4:18 isn't just about how someone looks on the outside.

4:21 A character can seem steady, capable, and totally in control,

4:24 but still be carrying a lot underneath the surface.

4:26 And honestly, that's how real life works, too.

4:29 A lot of people get good at looking fine,

4:30 keeping it moving, handling things, being the dependable one.

4:34 But that doesn't always mean you're actually dealing with what's going on.

4:36 And that's why I think taking care of your mental health matters.

4:39 Not because everything is falling apart,

4:41 but because sometimes you need space to actually check in with yourself,

4:44 to understand your health, your habits, your stress,

4:46 your reactions, and not just keep powering through on autopilot.

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5:38 I really do hope you guys get what I get out of it.

5:41 But as always, thank you for listening and now back to React.

5:44 Remember when we made that video where we

5:46 tier listed all the nuke scenes and movies?

5:48 How it makes you feel and the technical skill outweighs realism in my opinion.

5:53 Oh, yeah.

5:53 That's fair.

5:54 Yeah.

5:54 Yeah.

5:54 Yeah.

5:54 100%.

5:55 Guess what?

5:55 We've been graced by another movie with another nuke.

5:58 A modern production with modern CGI.

6:03 Ah, shall we see how it stacks up

6:09 The Gorge.

6:10 So, this movie came out in 2025 and I think it really uh flew under the radar.

6:14 It's got a ton of visual effects.

6:15 This feel this movie is like all visual effects.

6:18 Basically, the idea is that there's two guards up on towers on each

6:21 side of a gorge and they keep the zombies inside of it.

6:24 Oh, keep them in the gorge.

6:26 So, what's the mission?

6:27 To keep people from going in the gorge.

6:29 Look, it's a it's a whack.

6:30 Look,

6:32 no.

6:32 I mean, that's where you'd want them to be.

6:34 You need to stop what's in the gorge from coming out.

6:38 Let's just say that there's a gorge.

6:40 The gorge

6:41 with zombies in it.

6:42 It's getting out of control.

6:43 And they got to scorch the place.

6:44 They got to nuke the place, as one might say.

6:48 Get us airborne.

6:50 Now,

6:50 what's one thing you must have in a nuke scene?

6:52 A helicopter.

6:53 a helicopter flying away.

6:55 The question is, will it be impacted by the winds of the nuke?

7:07 Tiny little nuke the helicopter.

7:13 I can't keep it straight.

7:19 Affected by the nuke winds clearly.

7:24 Wait, what the heck?

7:26 Wait, what the heck?

7:28 Where is the fuel?

7:29 If you ever paid attention to school,

7:30 you'd know that the fuel of a helicopter is stored outside the windshield,

7:34 hence the fireball when we get to the inside of the helicopter.

7:37 I do really like the visual quality of the dust being lit by the light.

7:42 It's like that looks very tasty.

7:44 That's the one thing that CG nukes can do is you

7:47 can have the smoke and dust get lit by your CGI explosion.

7:50 Now,

7:54 if we've been underelling the power of this nuke,

7:55 let's really underell it here by cutting to somebody casually

7:59 casually watching casually watching a nuke.

8:02 She's very close.

8:03 Very close.

8:05 No light whatsoever.

8:06 Can you have a light on set shining on her face?

8:09 Was that a nuke?

8:10 I think that's a nuke that I'm looking at with my bare eyes.

8:14 Okay.

8:13 In the dark, dimly lit forest.

8:15 Blind.

8:15 So, your direction here is you're looking at a nuke going off.

8:18 All right.

8:19 Ready?

8:21 Nice.

8:22 Aced it.

8:23 Moving on.

8:23 The biggest thing that stands out to me is how dim this nuke is.

8:28 This is the dimst nuke of all time.

8:30 It's like just beige orange as opposed to blisteringly white bright.

8:36 Even though it's bright, it's too dark immediately.

8:38 And it's literally the same size as the tower.

8:40 I was just going to say it's the size of the tower.

8:42 The size of the tower.

8:43 That is truly that's like that's what the actual size

8:45 of the Oppenheimer practical effect was was like the size of the tower.

8:49 Notice the shape of it.

8:50 You're already starting to get that mushroom head.

8:52 That only happens when it's starting to rise through

8:55 the atmosphere and the convection is causing it to curl.

9:00 Yeah.

8:59 For the first several seconds of an explosion here,

9:02 it's literally just a bunch of expanding gas in a perfect sphere.

9:08 Yeah.

9:07 And everything that the light touches will be roasted.

9:12 Everything the light touches.

9:14 Wow.

9:15 Come on, Dad.

9:16 We got to go.

9:17 There's clearly some very expert level simulation work going on.

9:21 A lot of very very highlevel compositing work

9:23 happening and very little understanding of how nukes work.

9:27 So, what would you uh what grade would you give this nuke?

9:29 Some of the simulations are really cool.

9:31 Yeah.

9:31 Uh

9:32 that's exactly it.

9:33 The simulations are cool,

9:34 but they are definitely underpowering humanity's most deadly weapon.

9:37 Honestly, this is probably a C tier,

9:40 but like we're like really emotionally invested in it right now,

9:43 so we could call it a D tier.

9:44 It's look C tier for technical execution.

9:47 Actually, no, a technical execution is like a B tier actually.

9:49 It's on par with like Fallout for all

9:51 like the actual technical execution of effects.

9:54 Maybe outside of the fireball,

9:55 but the storytelling and the conceptualization of the nuke,

9:59 it almost brings it down to D tier.

10:02 I do believe it belongs in the D tier.

10:04 So guys, we're not reaching a consensus on this.

10:06 So we're just going to have to turn to the judge of all our tier list videos.

10:09 So Sam, I mean, what would you rate this nuke?

10:14 Wow.

10:15 Wow.

10:15 That's a very powerful nuke.

10:17 I mean, this is kind of cool.

10:19 Oh, helicopter.

10:20 Wait, are you kidding me?

10:22 Are you kidding me?

10:23 All right.

10:24 All right.

10:24 Okay.

10:24 Yeah, the chopper.

10:25 Whoa.

10:26 When a nuke goes off and you have enough time to like

10:28 turn and like kind of just kind of take it all in.

10:32 I mean, what I mean, what is she doing?

10:34 Hold on.

10:34 No, it's not it.

10:35 That's not it.

10:36 That's it.

10:37 It was like a solid B nuke.

10:40 Almost like a B+ nuke in my opinion.

10:42 The moment the helicopter happened, I was like,

10:46 that's like so tropey that like it brought it almost down to a C.

10:50 But like there's good Sims.

10:51 It's a B.

10:52 What did you guys think?

10:53 No, don't worry about it.

10:54 Don't worry about it.

10:54 Oh, what do you got next?

10:55 Oh, yeah.

10:56 So, um, hey, if you're going to be in Vegas for NAB this year,

10:59 we are going to be there at the Puget

11:00 Systems booth doing a bunch of presentations,

11:02 including a live visual effects artist react session.

11:04 So, it's a good time.

11:05 Come check us out if you're going to be there.

11:06 If not, subscribe to the channel.

11:20 A Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

11:22 Fantastic show.

11:23 the newest addition to the Game of Thrones universe.

11:26 You know, I've been so skeptical and I've heard so many people say it's good.

11:31 Yeah, I actively put off watching this show until literally every single

11:35 one of my friends was telling me I have to watch this.

11:38 I was like, "Okay." And I watched it and it was it was pretty good.

11:42 Yep.

11:42 Pretty good.

11:42 This is spoilerfree because I didn't want spoilers.

11:45 Kind of.

11:45 This is not spoilerfree.

11:47 We're going to look at a scene from episode 5.

11:49 There's only six in the season and this is a pretty pivotal moment,

11:52 but I did my darnest to cut out as many spoilers as possible cuz Nico

11:56 hasn't seen it yet and he really wants to and I'm trying to be respectful.

11:59 I really appreciate that.

12:02 Yeah, cuz I still watch movies for fun.

12:05 Sick armor.

12:06 Yeah, the armor game is on point.

12:07 Dope metal hair.

12:08 Yeah, this is like a hundred years before the events of Game of Thrones.

12:11 This is cool.

12:12 This is already super cool.

12:18 Oh, jousted immediately.

12:23 Oh, man.

12:25 Dang.

12:25 He's got dents on his helmet.

12:27 I love how they're directing this fight.

12:29 Mhm.

12:30 It's the realism for me.

12:31 Like, that guy's so strong, though.

12:33 Okay.

12:33 Unfortunate timing for me to say that.

12:37 Oh, man.

12:37 He's getting messed up.

12:39 This poor guy got so messed up.

12:46 How do you do a shot like that?

12:48 And look at the consistency of the blade after he pulls it.

12:52 Yeah.

12:51 He pulls it out.

12:52 He drops the blade and the blade bounces

12:54 and lands behind him and is propped up against itself

12:57 and it's slow and then comes out

13:00 and then he lets it go and it bounces and then lands against him.

13:03 Oh wow.

13:03 You know, I wonder if it was just taped to his hand and he did

13:05 that and they like just dealt with the stuff here but everything else is real.

13:08 That's what I was wondering too cuz you don't see his hand.

13:10 Yeah.

13:11 His hand could be a little lower.

13:12 They could literally puncture a real thing and have him pull it out.

13:14 Tape the real thing to it and do all the acting

13:15 and then don't worry about VFX once he pulls it out.

13:17 It's how I would do it.

13:18 This is a nice portrayal of like a medieval fight scene.

13:21 I totally agree.

13:22 Like you feel the weight, you feel the fatigue,

13:24 and you actually feel like the armor does something.

13:27 Yeah.

13:27 I also feel like this guy is just getting destroyed.

13:30 He keeps getting stabbed so many times.

13:32 Also, how is he not dead yet?

13:34 It could be penetrating a little bit and stopping just shy.

13:37 Sometimes getting through a flesh wound.

13:42 That's a rough one.

13:45 Also, what's really interesting here is that it's so foggy.

13:48 It's just very localized to immediately what's in front of the character here.

13:53 Obviously, the atmosphere of this particular fight was very important.

13:56 Uh they wanted it to be, you know, dense fog,

13:58 just chaos of war, muddy, just, you know, you can't see a claustrophobic.

14:01 You can't see what's going on.

14:03 And so, they brought fog machines out the wazoo.

14:05 And so, they were absolutely pumping the location as best they could.

14:08 And then one strong gust of wind came in and just took it all away.

14:12 Keep an entire valley cloaked in fog was super tricky.

14:17 Oh, okay.

14:17 We're gonna have a real hard time

14:19 with consistency for this entire fight sequence.

14:22 And so, hey, guess what?

14:23 That's why it's on this show.

14:25 VFX Artist React.

14:26 That's where the VFX exists here the most is all of that fog.

14:30 210 VFX shots where fog needs to be pumped back in in the midground,

14:33 foreground, background.

14:35 Tons of roto for all the characters.

14:37 It's a lot of work.

14:38 Wow, it's a lot.

14:40 Well, I was literally wondering.

14:41 I was like, that is a lot of fog.

14:43 Surely that has to be added, right?

14:46 Cuz it's so consistent.

14:47 And I'm sure they've got a lot

14:48 of like fog machines still going despite the wind.

14:51 It's very patchy and inconsistent, but it is obviously it's there.

14:54 And it's nice to have as much as you can have.

14:56 Yeah.

14:56 It's It's funny cuz like we're just now I'm just focusing on the fog.

14:58 There's this crazy fight going on.

15:00 Like, we want fog.

15:02 Yep.

15:02 And what's cool about this show too is it really resets the stakes.

15:05 It's like it lowers the stakes dramatically and it's

15:07 just a localized story and it's actually so refreshing.

15:10 I I really like how they went about executing everything.

15:13 Like the the inh helmet cam is great.

15:14 If we go back to the beginning,

15:16 the first shot where we like flies up into the back

15:18 of his head and into that POV for the joust cuz

15:21 there's a line in the book that's something along the lines

15:24 of he could only see what was directly in front of him.

15:26 It was basically describing his perspective in the battle and they took

15:29 that and brought it to life for us here in a really claustrophobic way.

15:33 But that shot was a really cool combination of cable cam

15:38 flying up to a rider and then a smallbodied Ronin 4D really chicken head cam.

15:45 Wow.

15:44 Mounted into the helmet.

15:46 They had that chest mounted onto the rider and the rider.

15:50 The rider was mounted to a fake half horse that was mounted to an ATV.

15:56 It was like the coolest rig I've ever seen in my life.

15:59 And those are the use for this shot.

16:01 Exactly.

16:01 Well, I for one am looking forward to when

16:03 the VFX breakdowns for the show come out.

16:06 Yep.

16:06 Yeah, me too.

16:07 Yeah.

16:07 Thanks for watching everybody.

16:08 Uh consider subscribing if you haven't yet

16:10 in the past six years we've been doing the show.

16:11 And uh leave some comments for some really

16:14 cool effects that you want us to look at.

16:16 Hey, if you're a new viewer,

16:17 like if you just discovered us in the last like couple months,

16:20 leave a comment down below.

16:21 I want to I want to welcome you.

16:23 Thanks for watching.

16:24 Be typing welcome a lot into your computer.

16:27 Welcome.

16:27 Welcome.

16:28 Welcome.

16:29 Welcome.

16:31 And if we get over 10,000 comments on this video,

16:34 the next react is going to be the Harry Potter special.

16:37 So, tune in.

16:39 Is 10,000 too many?

16:40 No, that's a good number.

16:41 Okay, sweet.

16:42 Yeah, we'll never hit that.

16:43 Yeah.

16:43 Great.

16:43 All right, guys.

16:44 We'll see you next week.

16:45 Bye-bye.

16:47 That was a threatening goodbye.

16:51 Oh, you're still here.

16:52 Uh, consider subscribing.